Where’s the Beef has an excellent guide as to how the Underground Warez scene works. It talks about the “Piracy Chain” which consists of:

Warez/Release Groups - People who release the warez to the warez community. Often linked with Site Traders.

Site Traders - People who trade the releases from the above groups on fast servers.

FXP Boards - Skript Kiddies who scan/hack/fill vulnerable computers with warez.

IRC Kiddies - Users of IRC (Internet Relay Chat) who download from “XDCC Bots” or “Fserves.”

KaZaA Kiddies - Users of KaZaA and other p2p (peer to peer) programs.

Where’s the Beef’s “A Guide To Internet Piracy”